Abused and discriminated against yet thriving and proud: the life of Muslims in Wales

A man prays at the Al Noor Mosque in Newport (Image: Richard Williams)

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What does it mean to be Welsh and Muslim?

How does it feel to grow up in a rapidly expanding community that is full of pride and love and yet which is not well understood by or fully integrated with the world around it?

How do you come to terms with the rising tide of abuse so many report?

Over several months, we have interviewed people throughout the 45,000-strong Muslim communities in Cardiff and Newport.

We’ve spent time in mosques; interviewed Imams, mosque elders, community workers, and women’s charities. We also spoke to a father who has no idea if his sons are dead or alive after they fled their family home to join Isis in Syria.

We found a community that is at once thriving and under-threat, both settled and unsure of its place, growing but vulnerable, integral to Welsh life but poorly understood and isolated.

We found an older generation worried about the conflict between rival western and conservative Islamic influences on their children, which some fear is changing the way some young Muslim men treat women and their families and leading a few into the hands of extremists.

There are no answers, only more questions. But it does go some way to explaining, through the words of others, what it’s like to be a Muslim in Wales today.

With a neon blue parka over his traditional Muslim outfit and wearing a hat known as a taqiyah, a 35 year old with smiling eyes called Shafqut Khan greets us as we arrive at Newport’s Al Noor just after Friday prayers one autumnal afternoon in September.

Sat on a busy, residential terraced street, the mosque could be mistaken for another terraced house, apart from the large, white plastic sign, and converted porch built to hold the hundreds of pairs of shoes that need to be taken off before prayers.

Shafqut is a second-generation Welsh Muslim who has lived in Newport all his life. His parents Shokit and Sajiaa Khan, moved to Wales from Pakistan in the 1960s.

Shokit, now in his 70s, was in the merchant navy in Oxford when he and some colleagues decided to take a road trip to Swansea.

But when they passed through Newport, it reminded them of home. Shokit got a job as a bus driver, and they’ve been there ever since.

It was quite a shock for them at first, Shafqut said: “In Oxford there was already a settled Asian community there. Here in Newport, he said, when he first came here, especially in the early 80s it was quite rough, so you did have racial tensions. But as a community, he just got used to it.

“At the time there were certain areas of Newport you just wouldn’t venture into.”

The Al Noor Mosque in Newport (Image: Richard Williams)

Life is very different for Shafqut. He runs his own wholesale company, importing and selling clothes. Before that he worked in a call centre for a bank for 15 years.

Unlike his parents he feels no need to stay within his community to avoid racism.

“I will comfortably go to any of the estates. When our parents came, it was more a case of you need to stick together with your community. We don’t have that.”

And yet there is a challenge for his generation that his parents didn’t face: the fear created by terror attempts. One of the people arrested after the Parsons Green attack in London was from Newport.

“It has is created a wave of fear and paranoia for people,” says Shafqut.

“The evil that does go on out there is a very small number of people. But they’ve always been given the limelight in the media, that platform to continue to promoting their hatred.”

One thing that is important to him is the mosque on Harrow Road. A former synagogue, it is now the oldest mosque in Newport and a hub for the community.

Video: Mosque elders at the Al Noor mosque talk about their history

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Shafqut lives around the corner, about two minutes away at most, and is always on hand to help with functions and the day-to-day running.

“The mosque is the central point,” he said. “That’s where you meet everybody, you get to know people from there. At some point you’re always crossing paths, whether it’s at the mosque or at the Halal meat shop. You just get to know people.”

As we sit and talk to Shafqut with tea and baklava bought from someone’s house around the corner, the mosque is full of life. People are constantly coming in and out, wanting to chat, pray, or simply just be in the building.

When we leave, a bunch of children rush in, keen to get to their Friday afternoon Quran lesson. Held every week night after school, the lessons not only teach the youngsters about the religion, but about life in the mosque. It’s also an illustration of the religion’s rapid growth and its importance in people’s lives. Everyone knows everyone and it is part of their life from childhood.

Shafqut greets the youngsters, handing them a carton of juice as they play outside. For him, being a part of the mosque is just a part of life.

“From morning prayer, so around 7am to eight or nine o’clock at night, our doors are open, whether someone is there or not,” he said. “So you can always walk into the mosque. It’s like a family.”

Map: Wales' 40 mosques span the nation but are concentrated in the south east

This is a picture repeated at many of Wales’ 40 mosques, most of which are in Cardiff and Newport, and which truly serve as focal points for the community.

There are 18 mosques in the Welsh capital, including ones for Somali, Arabic, Sufi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani communities. Newport has seven, with plans for an eighth being drawn up.

Between them, they are the home to 45,950 Muslims according to figures in the 2011 Census. Just over 23,000 live in the Welsh capital, with 6,859 in Newport and 5,415 in Swansea.

That means around one in 60 Welsh people is Muslim, slightly lower than the equivalent figure for England where around one in 20 are Muslim. In Cardiff, the figure is around one in 14.

Two years ago, the Muslim Council for Britain delved deeply into those census statistics to get a picture of Islamic life in the UK.

It found good stories to tell: Muslims are ethnically diverse; the level of segregation is starting to fall as Muslims spread out; a third are aged under 15 - higher than for the population as a whole; and levels of education are growing.

But there were also challenges: nearly half of Muslims live in the most deprived 10% of areas - while only 1.7% live in the wealthiest; unemployment is higher; health problems among the elderly are more pronounced; and Muslim women face challenges balancing their work aspirations with their family traditions.

As the chairman of the South Wales Islamic Centre on Alice Street in Butetown, Cardiff, for the last 27 years, 69-year-old Daoud Salaman has seen many of the changes that have affected his community.

A smiley and gentle man suffering from a bout of sciatica, the former marine engineer was born and bred in the Welsh capital. He knows that change has not been painless.

His Islamic Centre is one of the descendants of Wales’ first mosque, the Noor Ul Islam Mosque on Peel Street in Butetown. Like the street it once sat on, that mosque itself is long gone.

The Muslim community in the area, which traces its history back to the seamen who settled here from the end of the 18th century and established their first mosque in the 1920s, has also been disrupted.

Mr Salama has watched the area around Butetown be demolished, rebuilt and redeveloped - and said it has had a massive, negative impact.

“Butetown has changed dramatically. It’s nowhere like it was before the redevelopment. There were some beautiful houses down here. If they’d have gone for refurbishing those properties and not built those flats and all these new houses, it would have been a much better place.

“People would have been able to stay here, but they started moving families out of the area.

“There’s no respect. You’ve got a lot of people dealing drugs. These boys they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Children on their way to attend the Peel Street Mosque in March 1954 (Image: Mirrorpix)

Photographs from the 1940s and ‘50s show the vibrant Islamic community that existed in Butetown. There were parades celebrating the Islamic festival Eid and the first truly Welsh truly Muslim identities were born.

By 1930, the number of ‘Alien Coloured Seamen’ included 1,241 Arabs, who were mostly Yeminis, 227 Somalis, 148 Indians, 121 Malays and 49 Egyptians. They were nearly all Muslims.

A purpose-built home for the Noor Ul Islam mosque opened in 1944, after the original building was destroyed in the Blitz, and the community thrived.

It is said that Sheikh Hassan Udaini, who taught Arabic in the Cairo Cafe on Bute Street, made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1966 and proudly carried the Welsh flag.

Yet now Mr Salama, like many other Muslims in Wales we spoke to, feels the level of abuse they face is growing.

“Our women get treated badly when they’re out if they’re covered,” he said.

“It’s not very nice for them. They spit at them. They call them names. They do all kinds of things. The women weren’t causing any trouble, and they come home and they’re upset but it doesn’t go any further.”

A prayer room in the new mosque on Alice Street that replaced the old Peel Street mosque (Image: Richard Williams)

Mum-of-two Rahema Zaman is one of those women.

Growing up in Butetown, the charity worker would often face discrimination simply for the colour of her skin. But she says the abuse her daughter faces is different; it is abuse simply for being Muslim.

“She has experienced more Islamophobia than I ever did when I was growing up in school in Cardiff, and she’s only 12,” said Rahema, who works for the charity Mend which works to tackle Islamophobia.

“The comments that my child is having to listen to in school were pretty horrendous. People would be throwing something at her and making a bomb exploding sound. How do you respond to that?”

The abuse faced by white women who convert to Islam bears out her point.

Sat around a boardroom table at an office space at the Muslim Council of Wales in Cardiff, Rahema was visibly upset as she spoke about a white woman she knew who lived just outside of Cardiff who was being forced to move because of abuse.

“She’s as white as her neighbours are, but just because she’s started wearing a headscarf she’s suddenly an object to hate... It’s like she can’t step out of her door without these people threatening her life,” said Rahema.

Amanda Morris converted aged 25. Originally from Canada but now living in Cardiff, she mentors young girls in a similar situation.

Her bubbly personality is infectious but when she speaks about the troubles that the young girls are facing, she becomes visibly defensive. After all, this was her 30 years ago, but in a very different, more tolerant world.

“There’s a couple of girls who quite simply keep it a secret from their parents because they would get thrown out of their own homes,” she said.

“You could become literally any other religion and your family would be like ‘Well, it’s your choice’. But the minute you become Muslim, it’s suddenly like ‘How could you?’.”

Public attitudes to Islam scare her.

“Here at work, I’ve had a teacher in a town outside of Cardiff that had planned a school trip to visit Cardiff to visit a mosque and a synagogue. Thirty per cent of the parents withdrew their children from the school visit because they didn’t want them visiting the mosque,” she said.

People in all walks of life who are Muslim in Wales tell a similar story.

Councillor Ali Ahmed said he received abuse after the Brexit vote (Image: Rob Browne)

Ali Ahmed, the first Muslim Deputy Lord Mayor for Cardiff and a councillor for the Cathays area, said the Brexit vote last year was a tipping point.

In his office in between council business at County Hall near Cardiff Bay, he said: “I was coming out of one of the mosques for night prayer - for Ramadan we have night prayer - and I was on Macintosh Place with one of my friend.

“A gentleman was coming from City Road and he said to me: ‘Have you voted yesterday?’, I said: ‘Yes’ and he said: ‘In or out?’, I said: ‘In’. He said: ‘We voted out; when are you going to leave?’

After the Brexit vote, hate crime in Wales surged.

Figures from the Home Office revealed there were 2,941 hate crime offences recorded by police in Wales in 2016-17 - up by a fifth. The majority were motivated by race or religion.

How hate crime reports have risen in Wales

Home Office

Ana Miah, who has been the general secretary of the Shah Jalal mosque on Crwys Road, Cathays, Cardiff, since January, says there is little Muslims can do.

His mosque, a former Welsh Presbyterian church transformed into a mosque in 1988, has been at the centre of inter-racial tensions before when bacon was left at the mosque after the death of British serviceman Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Yet the Bangladesh-born Muslim is optimistic about his faith despite what has become normal in terms of abuse he and other Muslims now face.

“The only thing I personally witnessed was when we were leaving the mosque was someone winding down the windows [of their car] and hurling abuse, but what can you do?” he said. “It just replicated the mood during that time.”

Video: Ana Miah at the Shah Jalal mosque on Crwys Road, Cathays

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The abuse suffered by Muslims in Wales is inextricable from the public reaction to the increasing number of terror attacks seen since 2001.

Yet terror itself is partly a product of the difficulties faced by young Muslims in terms of integration, finding a job and reconciling their Welshness and the traditions of the communities and religion.

It is the vicious circle that elders in the community and the authorities are facing. The roll call of young extremists from Cardiff is painful to read.

Cardiff's extremists

In 2012, two brothers from Cardiff were sentenced for a total of nearly 29 years planning an attack in London. Abdul Miah and Gurukanth Desai were among nine members of an al Qaida-inspired terror group that plotted to bomb the London Stock Exchange and build a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

The same month, a Cardiff jihadist who applied to work at the Millennium Stadium during the Olympic Games was jailed for nine months. Norman Idris Faridi, from Roath, was found to have a “terrorist’s manual”, 39 Ways To Serve And Proceed In Jihad, on a hard drive.

One man who knows exactly what it’s like for radicalisation to take place right under your own roof is 60-year-old Ahmed Muthana of Butetown, Cardiff.

Both his sons fled to Syria to join the so-called Islamic State. He had no idea anything was going on, until the police showed up at his front door in Butetown one night.

Back in November 2013, 20-year-old aspiring medical student Nasser fled the country to join the rebels in Syria. His teenage brother, 17-year-old Aseel, later went on to join him and they both later appeared in a propaganda video together.

It left Ahmed devastated.

Sat cradled in chair in the corner of his living room counting out hundreds of tablets into daily containers, Ahmed looked defeated.

As he placed the drugs into boxes, a frail Ahmed said: “It’s too late, what can I do? Once they’re gone, that’s it. I was hurt the way the news came to me. They went without my knowledge.

“The first one phoned me up. He phoned his brother and said he was in Syria. I said: ‘What are you doing in Syria?’ He was going somewhere in the UK for three days. He never came back.

“The second one, he was in school. The police came to me asking questions. Nighttime, it came to nine o’clock and they said where is your passport for your son? I said this is his passport. They said he had a new one. They said he was in Cyprus.

“Five o’clock he had phoned me up saying he’d be back at five thirty. And then he said seven thirty, late. Nine o’clock the CID came to me and said to me he’s in Cyprus. I said how did you let him go? He said he obtained a new passport and he went. Someone even paid £20 [for him] to go from Cardiff to London and he flew.

“What do you expect me to do or say? I had a shock. I had heart problems and went to hospital for two weeks. That’s it. We blame several clerics, but we couldn’t find them. We went to mosques, but you don’t see them.”

Aseel Muthana as a primary schoolboy at St Mary the Virgin Church in Wales Primary School (l) and as a teenager

But Ahmed, originally from Yemen, still holds out hope, almost naively, about what he thinks has happened to them.

“It’s not confirmed the reports,” he said. “Someone has said they’ve been killed, one report said they had been captured by the Kurds. Another report says the Iraqi government, another said by the Syrian government. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead.”

But what would he say if they were to turn up at their childhood home in Cardiff?

“I would say nothing,” he said. “I would say give up and come to justice. If they come to the United Kingdom to get justice, I think it’s fairer than Arab justice. They can have a fair trial. They have to take their punishment. And if they haven’t done nothing, they can be released and go back to their community. But they shouldn’t go back into the community straight away. They need to have some educational about what happened and what they’ve done before they integrate in the country.”

What troubles Ahmed was the fact both his sons seemed to have a bright future before they left. Both had jobs and dreams. But both were radicalised by the perceived glamour of the terror group.

Nasser Muthana at primary school in Cardiff (l) and in a recruiting video for Isis

“So many young boys are unemployed and they go onto drugs,” Ahmed said. “Unemployment will lead to people looking for money. They want to make money. If they haven’t got money, they will turn to terrorism, anything, because people behind the scenes are giving them money.

“My sons didn’t go because they were unemployed. Nasser was employed with the council and Aseel was doing his A Levels. It was Islamic clerics behind the scenes. They show them how they kill people on the internet.

“They show them films on how the Americans kill the Muslim people in Iraq and Afghanistan and then the ideas of the clerics show them; ‘See what the Americans are doing to us? See what the British are doing to us?’ and they they start to boil them like they’re boiling an egg.

“Their mind is turned 180 degrees. They become radicals and they want to go somewhere to kill somebody. Not for money, they want to do it for fun. They think it’s like a film.”

Unemployment in the Muslim community is a problem. Last year, a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) Wales found Muslims are the least likely of all faith groups in Wales to be working even though they are more likely to hold a degree.

The report, Creating a Faith-Friendly Workplace for Muslims, showed that 27% of the Muslim population in Wales holds a degree, compared with 25% of the overall population, yet they are around 20% less likely to be in work.

And experts believe that there are people seducing vulnerable young minds in Cardiff. Last year, a leading Welsh faith leader said that extremists were still radicalising young people in the Welsh capital.

Dr Saleem Kidwai, the Secretary General of the Muslim Council for Wales, said: “I think one or two might still be operating in Cardiff.

“I am sure it’s going on,” he said.

It worries Daoud Salaman, of the South Wales Islamic Centre.

“I fear for our youth. God knows what life they’re going to have. Things are not looking very bright. A lot of them now are starting to go to university and get a better education, and I think things will change that way because they’ll have role models then to follow. Hopefully they’ll find better jobs.

“I fear they could be left behind, unless they better themselves and educate themselves better. Today everyone wants to see a certificate of some kind before they’ll give you a job.

“Without more education, they’re going to fall way behind and that leads to bad things like poverty and hardship.”

Video: Daoud Salaman on his fears for the future

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An issue for Shahien Taj, 50, founder of women’s charity the Henna Foundation, is not just radicalisation but the spread of other ideas on social media.

Shahien and the team help women, children and families in the faith to offer support and guidance.

She says women in Islam are safer than they have been for years but she is facing increasingly complex cases at her charity based in Butetown. Much more confident young men fuelled by social media who are both bolder but also more conservative in their faith.

Shahien talked about a video she had recently watched online, where two young Muslim men sat and berated a young Muslim woman for eating a banana ‘inappropriately’ wearing a hijab. It was watched by thousands around the globe.

“Unfortunately, we’ve got the younger crowd of Muslim men who have social media and I sometimes watch some of them and I was in despair. I was watching this man who can’t be more than 30 and there’s another young man about 18 or 19 sat there nodding away at this rhetoric.

“I actually showed this video to some of the scholars and I said this is what we have to put up with. It’s nonsense. But he had over 86,000 followers on his YouTube channel.”

Shahien Taj, Cardiff, who is head of the charity The Henna foundation (Image: walesonline)

Sat at a table at the back of a coffee shop in Roath, Shahien talked frankly about her concerns about the what she calls the “crisis of masculinity”.

The dominance of men in Muslim communities is evident.

To some degree, I experienced this as a young, white woman. Whilst, yes, I was invited into many mosques in Newport and Cardiff, and allowed into prayer rooms after Friday prayers, many of the female members of the community are not allowed into those rooms. They pray in separate rooms, which in one case was in a basement or not at the mosque itself at all.

Elders were keen to highlight how open they were but some men and imams wouldn’t shake my hand.

Many of the people interviewed for this article are, in some way, involved in the fight against extremism.

Shahien said most of those at risk of radicalisation were those who had suffered abuse.

“I’ve yet to come across one where it’s a clean slate and nothing happened,” she said.

“There’s some trauma that has occurred for that person to enter something like that.”

She said many were “running away from something”.

But she says the biggest difficulty is separating someone who is just becoming more conservative in their religion from someone who is being radicalised.

“Whereas before we did an assessments based on whether there was any abuse, any domestic violence, concerns of FGM, now we also see flagged up concerns of the imposition of certain behaviour which would be flagged up as extreme,” she said.

“You need to understand what’s in front of you. Because if you don’t and you’re not assessing that risk, you’re potentially letting the devil go.”

Imam Saddique Rehman (Image: Richard Williams)

Imam Saddiqur Rehman, of Newport’s Al Noor Mosque, sees his role as being to promote a positive understanding of Islam. He fears extremists becoming posterboys for the religion.

“Forget about harming someone, hurting someone, there’s nothing in the real faith. It’s just about loving and caring and understanding.

“That’s the beauty of our faith. The Muslims have nothing to do with all that extremism. They have nothing to do with our faith.”

Ex-Gwent policeman Mohammed Ahsan Deen, one of the elder figures at the mosque, also promotes the peaceful nature of his religion.

Exuberant and articulate, he demonstrates prayer poses in between tea and cake. A steady calmness about his voice spoke about the beauty he truly sees in his faith, and how it guides him in everyday life.

“I’m an ex-policeman and the role I had was almost to preserve and to protect,” he said.

“Well that’s what the purpose of every Muslim is - to serve and protect all forms of life, especially human life.

Mohammed Ashan Deen, a former Gwent policeman (Image: Western Mail)

“How can any real Muslim, if he’s not allowed to kill a fly because it hasn’t done anything wrong, how can they go around maiming or killing humans? It’s hard to believe. It goes against the beliefs of Islam or any religion.”

General Secretary of Shah Jalal Ana Miah said it was partly the job of mosques to limit access to radical material.

Still sat downstairs in the former church hall, now used for ladies during Friday prayer and as a teaching space, Ana said: “We’ve always been very careful who comes and preaches to our youngsters and there are some known individuals who have slightly different views than we may have as an Islamic society.

“It’s a major issue but I’m pleased to say in this particular community and this particular mosque, so far we’ve been immune from anything of that nature. We’ve managed to keep our youngsters away from anything unsavoury incidents or characters.”

One local community figure trying to change the future for young Muslims in Wales is Ali Abdi. The 30-year-old Somali works for Citizens Cymru, a group bringing together communities to try and persuade employers in Cardiff Bay to hire youngsters from Butetown, Grangetown and Riverside amongst other social issues.

The ‘Community Jobs Compact’, launched in February this year, aims to tackle poverty, unemployment and under-representation in the workforce by encouraging employers to recruit those from different backgrounds.

When I met with Ali at his office on a Friday afternoon after prayers in bustling Butetown, he reeled off example after example of people he knew and had grown up with not being able to get employment in the area they call home.

Despite getting a first class honours degree, 25-year-old Abir Islan, from Grangetown, struggled to find work in Cardiff.

Barhoom Alshiekmid, who is 25 and from Butetown, also found the same issue. He had a 2.1 degree in software engineering and ended up having to work abroad to get experience, before returning to the UK.

Both wanted to work. But both couldn’t get jobs. Barhoom told Ali he felt his name, appearance and religion was preventing him getting an interview.

Now Ali wants companies to have ‘unconscious bias’ training, and initiatives like name blind CVs, in a bid to try and give youngsters, not just from a Muslim background, a chance.

Ali Abdi works for a charity calling for community cohesion (Image: Western Mail)

Ali said: “What we’ve found is lots of people who felt they were applying for opportunities but they weren’t getting a look in because of their foreign-sounding name or because of the postcode they lived it.

“There’s an increasing amount of skilled young people from Butetown who are in poverty paid jobs. You’re talking call centres particularly, but these young people are having to go and work there because they’re not getting a look in in what they graduated in although there are opportunities there.”

With the lack of jobs evident, despite the redevelopment just down the road, it’s no wonder that young Muslims in Butetown are now feeling more isolated than ever.

“The reality is they feel they haven’t got a stake in the Bay whatsoever, despite it being a stone’s throw away,” Ali said. “They feel it’s not a welcoming environment.”

Ana Miah hopes communities realise how important the immigrant population is (Image: Andrew James)

Back at the Shah Jalal Mosque, Ana Mia just hopes the public comes to understand how important Wales’ Muslims are to the nation.

“Now that the dust has settled and people are coming to realise that the immigrant population in the UK is here to stay but is also serving a purpose. It’s providing important facilities to the wider facility and the economy as well.

“It’s going to stay. And as long as it’s here, gradual expansion will no doubt happen.”